#AND WHERE IS EKKO

[wolf-saint]

Jayce saying I won’t fail. I won’t fail. I won’t fail-

Terrified about what happened at the end of act 1 😶

[adastreia-12]

what the fuck did I just watch

[apollos-constant-crisis]

[vi-is-badass]

Here are some really interesting screenshots from the trailer:

[unknown-cold]

(Everyone in my life changed, please tell me you won’t)

I feel like the biggest problem Vi's personality is struggling with is that she doesn't accept change. The change that happens to the people Vi knows. Her inability to accept change is what holds her back from getting close to the people she loves.

Cause as we saw in the clip that was released at the geeked week event "Nothing to Lose" The video showed us something sad about Vi, which is that it is difficult for her to change or to change anything in her personality.

I feel like it's because she didn't experience change, she spent most of her life in prison doing the same thing every day for 7 years, so maybe after something bad happened to her or maybe to Caitlyn or Jinx. She went and did the thing she always did which was fight then get beaten then wake up to another day and fight and the same cycle repeats itself over and over.

"Of course, most of you know that this sentence is written on the T-shirt, which was released by Riot Games on Their Official Website."

[meansevika]

life as ekko and mel enjoyer rn

[glassrunner]

"You know, I learned from someone very special... that no matter what happened in the past, it's never too late to build something new."

EKKO, THE BOY WHO SHATTERED TIME | ARCANE S02E09

[phantom-shell]

Ekko and Heimerdinger: Woah!! we ended up in an alternative universe where Hextech was never invented and Zaun is thriving, it's actually pretty nice here!!

Jayce:

[purpleshimmer]

Arcane - S1 E7 - "The Boy Savior" + S2 - Bones UK - "Dirty Little Animals" + E1 - "Heavy is the Crown"

[witchlingcirce]

Jinx & Vi:

Ekko & Jayce:

[evie-doesnt-write]

I don’t know how to say this exactly but like… fandom and show are kinda weird about Mel and Ekko and it is very much rooted in racism

[mollysunder]

I'm not surprised (but still disappointed) that Arcane spirited Ekko out of Act 1 and 2, because if they kept him around then they'd have to engage in politics. I don't just mean, "Oh Ekko would know what to do and rally Zaun". I mean the writers would have to confront the fact that they don't want Ekko to challenge Piltover, the same way they don't want Jinx or Viktor to challenge Piltover in a serious way. It's easier for them to do it with the latter two because the audience readily disassociates those two's actions from politics and the ongoing conflict between Piltover and Zaun. They can't do that with Ekko because he's so plain-facedly Zaun-centric

Instead, both in League and Arcane they invent enemies for him that bring immediate danger to his community Zaun in the form of chembarons, mad scientists, and experiments gone wrong while avoiding anything but surface level criticism of Piltover. Even from Ekko's development his creators prioritized him having Zaunite champions as enemies over Piltovans, and even mentioned he would come to understand Vi's perspective eventually. Essentially, Ekko's character has been used as a way for Riot writers to walk around the fact they turned Zaun into the crime city Piltover deals with rather than parasitizes, and almost every other champion who isn't Ekko, Zeri, or Zac is a part of lineup of Saturday morning cartoon villains.

If Ekko was actually present for the events of Act 1 and 2, then the writers would have to find an excuse for him not to rightfully call out and even fight Caitlyn for gassing Zaun and occupying it. Without Silco as an immediate threat Ekko could engage with the wider Zaun and even interact with other Zaunite champions and the politics of their growing factions. Maybe Ekko would even be faced with the choice to turn Jinx in to keep the enforcers out and have to make a choice.

But the writers don't want Caitlyn or Piltover to be challenged too harshly and don't want to think too deeply on the political motivations/aspirations of their Zaunite champions. They just want Ekko to show up in the finale where the class conflict is pushed aside to face some larger existential threat that everybody can come together and dogpile on.

[incorrectarcane]

Ekko: *is showering*

Jinx: *yanks back the curtain*

Jinx: Do you have—Stop screaming it's just me. Do you have any more of those hoverboard thingies??

[bean-spring]

"Ekko is in love with Powder, not Jinx, so it wouldn't have worked out either way" is such a dumb argument against Timebomb.

Because yes, Ekko had a crush on Powder when they were kids. Yes, he tried to save Powder from her fate and ended up as rivals instead. Yes, he fell in love with Powder in another universe.

But that doesn't mean he was not willing to fall for Jinx too or that he didn't care about her. He continuously shows, despite not agreeing with her, full respect and acceptance for her decision. He agrees on Powder being dead but still cares enough to refuse to kill Jinx. He cares enough to go back and make amends with her and fight next to her. He cares enough to see her instead of Powder when he comes back from the alternate universe.

"But he still sees her as Powder and that's why he does this. He's driven by melancholy" aren't we all? Isn't Vi, too? And her love couldn't be questioned in any way, either.

Upon seeing the life they could've had together, Ekko goes back to team up with Jinx. Not the way he tried to do in season 1, seeking to save her and then becoming "savior boy". No. This time he goes to see Jinx and Jinx only.

People keep bringing the whole "he loves her past self" argument to fight this but it doesn't really mean anything when he was clearly willing to fall for the girl she is now. We keep forgetting that despite Powder and Jinx being different, they're two sides of the same coin and entity. Jinx is not Powder and viceversa, but Ekko knows that. People act as if he didn't but he's probably the one character respecting that the most while struggling with the change.

He ends up dressing with Jinx's colors. Mourning both Powder and Jinx.

To say he only loves Powder is to ignore his efforts to learn about Jinx because, if he only cared for her past self, he wouldn't have tried to help Jinx instead.

[spid-korr]

So someone on twitter pointed out that:

There's a subtle shift from anger to surprise in her eyes at the end here.

Im guessing Most people assumed (because the Trailer deliberately wanted to imply it) that she looks up to Jinx arriving in the Runeterra-Hindenburg but...

What if she looks up to Vi arriving alongside the Fireflies?

WHAT IF SHE SAW VI????

[arowyn-m]

Why Viktor Could Die in S2

“They won’t kill a champion because—“ okay just pause for a second and humor me. I’ve made a lot of arguments in the past about why every Arcane character is fair game but that’s not what I’m arguing here—I’m arguing from a narrative standpoint.

Viktor’s my favorite character in Arcane, but I believe him dying in the series finale is the most likely conclusion to his arc. Here’s why:

Viktor’s whole arc is about life and death as a concept—what really constitutes “living”? (Posed by the scenes with Rio) Why is a human life inherently valuable? (Posed by capitalizing on his aggressive need to leave a legacy) Which is more important—a person’s effect on the world around them or their effect on their loved ones? (Viktor realizing too late that Sky valued him not just for his output but for who he is)

There’s also a ton of foreshadowing to Viktor’s demise coming about by a fault in his technology or by the careless way he relates technology to human life (usually himself but not always), and it’s often disguised as humor (the “of course not” scene) or hidden behind false foreshadowing for death by illness (basically everything to do with the Hexcore in eps 5 and 6)

I’ve theorized about it on here before, but I believe at the end of the series the Hexcore will be destroyed (probably by Jayce, specifically to call back to the promise he made to Viktor), effectively ending the threat of the Void overtaking Piltover. Viktor will be so connected to the Hexcore by the finale that destroying it will kill him. He reaches his Glorious Evolution, yes, but it destroys him in the end.

And yeah there is merit to the “how can you live with yourself” kind of approach to ending a character’s story, but that conclusion has the strongest impact if the character’s arc is about learning to live with your mistakes. Most of the character arcs in this show pose that question, but Viktor’s arc really doesn’t?

As far as we can tell with Viktor so far, there’s very little grappling with that concept up until his last 5 or so minutes of screentime, and even then it’s more of a blip that resolves itself (“In pursuit of great, we failed to do good. We have to make it right.”) If Viktor’s story is about defining the respective values of “life” and “humanity” then the most bittersweet ending to his story would be by letting him die after briefly coming back to his humanity.

At the same time, in Ep 5 of BtR Alex Yee says this when talking through writing the script for S2:

“It’s, like, die or accept some things being imperfect. That would be the way that they could go back to humanity.”

So if we assume he’s talking about Viktor covertly here (he very well could be talking about some other character, but yk “going back to humanity” is a very Viktor-coded issue) we could also speculate that they may try to end Viktor’s arc with him accepting the Glorious Evolution just…doesn’t work. I hope that’s not the case because that kind of kills his whole shtick but anything’s possible lol.

To round off this thought by comparison—there’s no chance Jinx dies by the series finale because her whole character arc will inevitably move from “Am I Powder or am I Jinx?” to “Okay, I’m Jinx. How do I live in that identity with the knowledge of my past mistakes?” Her dying at the end of the series would be an unsatisfying conclusion to that question. Same thing with Vi. Vi’s arc was about trying to “fix” things. She just wanted things to go back to the way they were, and they just can’t. Her arc is probably going to be centered around her grappling with grief over losing Powder AGAIN and learning to accept things will never go back to how they were before. Caitlyn’s arc is going to be her exacting revenge and maybe living with regret and bitterness. None of those character arcs logically conclude with “and though they found the answer to their life’s question, they died.”

Viktor’s probably will.

Also here’s a link to a longer more in-depth theory I had a while ago—kind of a adjacent to this thought (for some reason it won’t work as an embedded link) https://www.tumblr.com/arowyn-m/755893249865039872/jayceviktorhexcore-situation-in-s2?source=share